The place they entered was a low ceiled, dark paneled room with no music visible or audible. There were white spread tables, but the women around them were far from beautiful, the men undistinguished in the extreme—matrons on the heavy order with men who were quite obviously, even to Ruth’s untrained gaze, their lawful spouses. Both men and women were giving more attention to their food, than to their companions and they were drinking—beer.
“It’s quiet here and we can talk,” said Terry, quite oblivious to Ruth’s disappointment, but when they were seated he did not talk.
“Tell me about the new comedy you’re writing,” said Ruth, remembering the axiom that it is always tactful to talk to a man about his own work.
“No; I want to forget my work and myself. Let’s gossip. Tell me about Gloria’s husband.”
In this Ruth thought she detected the interest of a jealous suitor.
“Professor Pendragon is very charming and very clever and good looking. He is taller than Gloria, and apparently has no particular vocation, for he has given up astronomy. His interest in art he calls a fad; he lives alone in a suite in the Belton Hotel and about ten days ago he became mysteriously paralysed—his right leg up to the knee. That’s all I know,” said Ruth, “except that he’s one of the most fascinating men I’ve ever seen and I can’t understand why any woman would ever give him up. He’s almost as wonderful as Gloria herself. I’d like to say that he is ugly and old and disagreeable for your sake, but he isn’t.”
Terry looked at her uncomprehendingly for a moment and then ignored her inference if he understood it at all.
“That’s a lot of information to have collected all about one person,” he said. “They say it was a great love match and that they disagreed over some trifle. They met and were married in London and Gloria got a divorce in Paris less than a year later. Curious his turning up just now.”
“Why just now?” asked Ruth.
“Because Gloria is a woman who must at all times have some absorbing interest, and recently she hasn’t had one and it’s telling on her. She has fits of moodiness, and wild ideas that she never carries out—like the proposed sudden trip to Palm Beach. Two years ago when I first met Gloria she would have gone. If only I could finish my comedy and make it a real success with Gloria in the star rôle—”